Printed wiring boards have traditionally been coated with protective materials to preserve solderability between the time of manufacture and the final assembly and soldering operations. Such protection is extremely important for printed wiring boards employing copper wiring surfaces due to the affinity of untreated copper to oxidation. The protective materials employed must be compatible with the underlying copper and the flux and solder used in final soldering. Therefore, the most obvious and popular materials employed are solder and either rosin or resin. Suitable preflux coating compositions are described in copending patent application Ser. No. 718,004, filed Jun. 20, 1991, now U.S. Pat. No. 5,176,749 and assigned to the assignee of the present invention. The preflux coating compositions described therein and which are incorporated herein by reference thereto, encompass the resin-type coatings. The solder-type coatings are termed "solder levelled" or "hot aired levelled" and are, strictly speaking, a "pre-solder type of protection" for the underlying copper. The present invention is directed to method and apparatus for pretreating copper through the employment of preflux-type coating compositions.